The present disclosure relates generally to energy absorbers for use in a vehicle, for example, to reduce injuries (e.g., to occupant(s), pedestrian(s), etc.) and/or to reduce vehicle damage.
Increased importance has been placed on methods for minimizing the amount of injury suffered by a person in an accident as well as the amount of vehicle damage. Different regulatory committees assess automotive pedestrian and occupant impact performance globally. Depending on the overall performance, vehicles are assigned a cumulative safety rating. Each and every component of the vehicle needs to satisfy the specific impact criteria in order to ensure a good overall rating for the vehicle.
Foam energy absorbers are able to meet the pedestrian regulations, but require increased packaging space (e.g., greater than about 80 millimeters (mm)). Metallic energy absorbers are too limiting in terms of the geometries and thicknesses that can be utilized and thus, are not very efficient for pedestrian safety. Automobile manufactures are continually striving to reduce energy absorber component weight and/or reduce the packaging space of components to allow for increased styling freedom while simultaneously providing high performance energy absorber systems. One approach is to lower the energy absorber component weight to provide a lower cost and lower weight solution. However, merely lowering the energy absorber component weight results in a compromise in performance and styling freedom for the front end of the vehicle. Another approach has been to design an energy absorber with a less expensive material or various material configurations to provide a less expensive energy absorber. These material configurations are often inefficient at providing the desired structural integrity for energy absorbers. Still another approach has been to modify the geometrical configuration of an existing energy absorber design. However, this approach has not resulted in a significant weight change. These existing low performance systems generally require large amounts of packaging space to meet the impact regulations. A large packaging space, however, reduces the vehicle styling freedom.
This generates the need to design an energy absorber that will deform and absorb impact energy to ensure a good vehicle safety rating with a decreased weight and lower amount of packaging space resulting in lower cost and increased design freedom. Different components due to their inherent geometry and assembly requirements require different energy absorber designs to satisfy the various impact criteria. Therefore, the automotive industry is continually seeking economic solutions to improve overall safety rating of a vehicle. Hence, there is a continual need to provide a solution which would enhance a vehicle safety rating and/or reduce vehicle damage, while also providing design freedom.